Larry Hass was a young professor at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pennsylvania, when he approached the administration with an idea that he feared would be treated as a joke. Dr Hass, who normally teaches the standard courses in philosophy, wanted to teach magic.

Moreover, he wanted to turn Muhlenberg into a center of magical study. That meant that, in addition to classes centered on card tricks, folding roses and stage fog, magicians would be invited to perform on campus and to explain their craft. Perhaps other professors from a range of disciplines would lend a hand in the study of magic. ?I was very nervous to bring it up to the deans,? Hass said. He was pleasantly surprised (even a little shocked) that the administration agreed to his proposal.

?My first reaction,? said Curtis Dretsch, then dean of the faculty and now a theatre professor, ?was that this might be unusual in an institution of this kind. But on a fundamental level, Larry was talking about exploring a different way of thinking about the things we were already thinking about.?

Part of Hass? proposal was he would use magic as a lens to look at more traditional subjects ? from philosophy to the psychology of perception to how history can be told through trends in magic and how audience attention can be manipulated. The goal would be to teach tricks but also to trick students into learning. Deception would become a teaching tool.

The magic programme began five years ago with two courses that Hass feared would not fill. They did, with three times as many prospective students. Professor Dretsch was braced for phone calls from parents asking why their children were studying levitation and accusing the college of becoming gimmicky. But no phone calls ever came, he said, and Hass's magic programme even started to attract professors from other fields.

?There was hesitancy,? said Susan Schwartz, a religion professor who is one of several faculty members weaving the study of magic into their courses. She added that teachers always needed someone to help them look at and teach their disciplines from fresh perspectives. ?I hope I?m considered a grenade-thrower like Larry,? she said. ?I teach a course on the religion of Star Trek.?

On a recent day, Hass? students arrived early for class and milled about, discussing the finer points of three-card monte and sawing a body in half. The magician Juan Tamariz had spent the better part of the week giving lectures and shows on campus, and Hass spoke to the class about Tamariz?s Mad Hatter stage persona and how the students might look within themselves to find their own. The tickets to his events were so hot on campus, said Scott Rodrigue, a freshman, that those with extras had dating currency. ?You can get a hot date because of magic here,? he said.

After deconstructing Tamariz, Hass made reference to Houdini?s magical escapes as a metaphor for the European immigrant experience of the 1930s and gave a lesson on capturing and holding an audience?s attention. ?By the way,? he advised at one point, ?all the rules of art are made to be broken. You just have to come up with a really good reason for breaking them.?

Hass, 44, knows that he is probably not training many future David Copperfields. Though several students had good potential, he said that if a student came to him seeking advice about becoming a professional magician, he would offer words of caution, though he would offer similar advice to students thinking of going to graduate school to study philosophy.

Kim Swaneveld, a senior theatre-philosophy major, has worked summers as a magician?s assistant. She said that despite her practical experience with magic, Hass got her to think about it theoretically and in a wider way.

Marc Rogol, a senior theatre major, said he was always interested in magic and was still amazed that he happened upon what he considers to be a trade school within a small liberal arts school. Kim David, a sophomore, said her goal by the end of the semester was to ?pull lollipops out of my mouth?. She said that her parents were supportive, adding that because she is a theater major, they are used to paying good money ?for me to be up on a stage?.

Hass said his fascination with magic began in his mid-30s when he happened upon a television magician while flipping channels. He called his young son to the television, assuming that the boy would be amused, if not enthralled. His son had no interest.

But Hass, whose philosophical specialty is in phenomenology, was hopelessly taken. ?Magic had always been quietly pushed into a box marked kids stuff/na?ve,? Hass said, but in its experiential nature and with its undercurrent of wonderment, there were direct links-up to a point-with his own field of study.

?All philosophy begins with wonder,? he said, ?then you bring in reason and wonder disappears.?

Hass threw himself into the study of the field, from theories on misdirection to the basics of pulling a coin from ears. He read everything he could find and even called famous magicians to ask them questions.

His wife, Marjorie Hass, formerly a philosophy professor at the school and now its provost, said with a laugh that she was not too concerned that her husband, then untenured, was spending his time on magic, rather than publishing papers.

?It was not a discipline taught in the academy,? she said, but she added that she felt he was onto something in studying it, especially because there was a strong link with his focus on phenomenology. And throwing himself headlong into a subject is her husband?s way, she added, noting that when they met as graduate students, he was obsessed with pulp magazines of the 1930s and busied himself contacting retired cartoonists, asking men in their 80s and 90s to come to conferences.

Now, Hass said with a touch of wonderment, ?Magic has become part of my day job.?